Clothes washer sold in the US and Canada. Notable for
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The casual assumption that it would be women doing the washing, and,
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The lax payment schedule. “If you want it, pay a little each week, or a little each month. No hurry; just suit yourself.”
this policy sounds like a logistical nightmare. give these washers out to people, then follow up and collect it for free? or collect unstructured payments from everyone who borrowed one? I can’t imagine
Doesn’t it though! I could see a tiny local business run like that where you do business on a handshake. But this was a multi-national business with product shipped out of NYC and Toronto. The customer might be in like California or Saskatchewan. Eh, just send us some money once in a while if you keep it more than 30 days.
Found photo of surviving one.
These apparently became motorized around 1920, so the ad must be before that.
That’s so cool! I would totally display this thing
It’s giving me ideas about building a chair
That casual assumption was nearly universal. Read some very early scifi, if they include female characters at all there are always lines like “Tina, you’re a woman, you could never manage to (do things that matter).”
My favorite part of this ad is describing it as a “Gravity” washer and all the manual work you no longer need to do with the implications that some new science and gravity is doing the work… then the image with that nice big hand crank.
Gravity’s only job is keeping things in the bucket.
the image with that nice big hand crank.
I had the same thought. Although to be fair to the ad copy, from what I have read, devices like this were a major improvement on the labor of using a washboard. You still had to supply muscle power, but it was less labor intensive overall and much faster.
That casual assumption was nearly universal
Oh for sure. Big occupational segregation at the time, so the ad wasn’t even wrong per se, in its historical context. It would have indeed been exceedingly more likely.
I guess to be fair it is also a big step up from the Anti-Gravity washer they released before this one to show off crazy new advances in science. Trying to hold all the water and clothes so they don’t float off while turning that crank cost a lot of women their fingers.
It had a false bottom in the tub, where gravity could pull debris and filth down into under your clothing as you use the handle on the side of the tub to rotate it back and for like the auger in a modern upright washing machine.
Tbh i would still use this today…before i got my washer and dryer i used a bucket and a spinning mop dryer to wash most of my clothes for about three years, and a laundromat to wash things bigger than a t shirt. I dreamed of having a wash basin with a drain (dont have to lift and dump, just pull a plug!) and omg a wringer!
They motorized this later on but leaks from the basin would cause it to short sometimes which was, of course, dangerous.
It also looks like the false bottom doesn’t rotate, just the basin, so the claims that the water moves and not your clothing is fairly stated!
- We just send it to you, use it 30d and then pay or send back.
Very notable I’d argue. That would indeed compell me to try it, if they are THAT confident of their product. Noone does that today anymore, as items often don’t even make it 30 days 😒
Is this the proto-WinRAR license model?!?
Where can I buy one?
Who’s selling these, Tom Nook?
